General Austin also said the US would not reach its goal of training 5,000 Syrian fighters in the near future.
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The US military is coming under pressure because of setbacks in the battle against Islamic State, including a disastrous debut for a force of U.S.-trained Syrian rebels and the fall of the Iraqi city of Ramadi to the militant group earlier this year.
The United States had originally planned to train up to 5,000 Syrian fighters to combat the group, which controls broad swathes of Iraq and Syria.
But the program was troubled from the start, with some of the first class of less than 60 fighters coming under attack from al Qaeda’s Syria wing, Nusra Front, in their battlefield debut.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the committee, called the program a failure, outlined his vision of a US strategy to fight IS and suggested that more American servicemen and women might eventually be needed.
The pro-US Syrian rebel faction, dubbed the New Syrian Force (NSF) in most official contexts, is virtually gone now, with virtually everybody either killed or having fled.
Austin, who insisted that “progress is being made” against Isis, said he “would not recommend” establishing a military cordon to protect Syrian civilians from forces loyal to dictator Bashar al-Assad and Isis, which has led to the flow of hundreds of thousands of desperate refugees now causing a huge immigration crisis in Europe.
Christine Wormuth, undersecretary of defense for policy, told senators that the US was looking at how to speed up the recruiting and screening processes.
He said he would take “appropriate actions” if an investigation by the defence department’s inspector general finds that senior defence officials altered intelligence.
A third group of fighters broke off from the main group to follow a leader who had chosen to fight Assad regime forces instead of ISIS. “Neither is good”, McCain said, NBC reported.
Sen. Kaine noted that the Pentagon was not alone to blame as Congress has stopped short of authorizing the war-or making efforts to stop it. Kaine said the senators would acting more like editorial writers than legislators. From left are, McCain, the committee’s ranking member, Sen. They would be equipped with USA communications gear and trained to provide intelligence and to designate IS targets for airstrikes in coordination with US troops outside of Syria, the officials said.
Critics say US-allied militants could turn their training and weapons against the Syrian government rather than Daesh because they see the terrorists as fighting a parallel war.
Wormuth said the number of trainees in the program was “definitely smaller than expected” and attributed the low number of trainees to the stringent vetting standards being used by Centcom to prevent extremists from entering the program.
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But Austin said, “Because the allegations are now under investigation, it would be premature and inappropriate for me to discuss this matter”.
